Good Girl
I’m a bruised person. I try to hide it and revel in each smirk afforded to me by a universe that also allows me a job I love, and friends who cheerlead my writing, and lovers who kiss trust into my shoulders on cold Brooklyn nights. My life is good, even lucky, and I’ve fought to make that luck by wrapping my small hands around every inch of a future within my grasp. But I feel the bruises in my bones like injuries from an old accident, aching at a spare word or a trace of familiar cologne on the subway. I take off my clothes at the end of each day and trace the past across my skin. No amount of confidence can protect you from disappointment. Sometimes people fail you and your hands tremble, left outstretched.
I meet him in a bar. There’s a whole group of us Twitter mini-titans wearing ironic hats and faux-fur coats, and I know so much about everyone, their abusive parents and various disorders, but I don’t know how to make small talk. We chat about BuzzFeed and who has been insulted by celebrities recently. I just got back from traveling for two weeks and I want to be wearing sweatpants in bed with all of the lights off, but isolating myself when I’m anxious makes the white noise of my brain worse. The dive bar is loud enough to drown it out. I nurse a beer and nod at everything.
And then there he is, tall and full of kind energy, the smile a wide light across his face. He leans across the booth to laugh at my jokes and look at me with big, bright eyes. There’s something about him that reminds me of my ex in a gentle, oddly comforting way. It’s in how he talks with his whole body, and I recognize a part of myself come back to life, a warmth. A friend steals him back in conversation and I consider taking a business card out of my wallet and scrawling my number across the back, but he returns and asks if I want another drink. I want another drink.
There’s a goodbye kiss on the L Train and an invitation to come over to my place the next night. I make him watch my favorite TED Talk before we have sex. His hand presses against my throat but doesn’t tighten, holding me in place, and I sink into how much I want this man and how I have him now. It’s rare for me to be so comfortable with someone whom I’ve only just met, and he whispers into my sweaty hair that I’m a good girl, yes, that’s it. I think about it at work the next day, good girl. The simplicity of those two words won’t leave me alone.
We text about our likes and dislikes, what we want to try and what we need to avoid. He is a dominant and I confess there are kinks I used to like but had taken from me, words ruined outside of play. Being called a whore stops being fun when someone you love means it. He apologizes for what a boy he’ll never meet did, not even knowing what he’s apologizing for. He says he’d like to help me explore my boundaries if I’m interested and we pick safe words. It’s fun at first, his hands yanking my hair, his body strong and heavy and overwhelming. But there’s this hollowness in my mind, this cavern that opens up as he tells me what a filthy slut I am, tells me to get on top, now, and I don’t know who I am and I don’t know who he is and I sob red, red. He steps out of the role immediately and holds me close to his chest, presses kisses into my hair. We puzzle out what happened together afterward: I like submission but I have been degraded enough for a lifetime.
There’s always a moment in a new relationship when you have to explain what’s fucked up about you. Most of my dark secrets are already on the Internet, articulated neatly with beautiful imagery in blog posts or personal essays. But it’s hard to explain what makes me feel unsafe, what little shifts in tone and/or delays in conversation can reduce my assurance to so many survivor splinters. I don’t need commitment but I need clarity; boys in their early twenties do not often understand the difference. He is in his mid-twenties and is less afraid of mapping out our terms early on. We are having fun, fucking twice a week and collaborating on the occasional project. Our sex is loud, our relationship quiet but not secret. It is a relationship because we have one, not because we are in one, and he sleeps over when it’s too late to catch the G train. Twenty-three hours of the day, I am my own person, whole and brash and strong. When we are having sex, I am his. I’m yours. I’m your good girl.
After maybe a week, a week and a half of seeing each other, he asks me what my thoughts are on daddy kink. My usual composure dissolves into giggles.
A few summers before, I interned with Madison Young, a brilliant feminist pornographer. Afternoons were spent in her adorable house in the Bay Area, stuffing copies of her book into bubble mailers to send to reviewers. I devoured Daddy: a Memoir over a weekend sitting in the park by my apartment, challenged and enthralled by its graphic, messy sex scenes. The central relationship felt weird to me, its submission and age play so core to her identity. My young feminist brain found the concept of a “daddy” as alien as the fetish ropes Madison wore in the portrait above her dining room table. I respected what I didn’t understand even as it made me uncomfortable. At twenty-two I didn’t want a daddy; I wanted a gentle boyfriend who wouldn’t bolt when things got hard. I wanted someone to support me as I figured out who the hell I was.
I tell him it’s not my thing and he doesn’t press it but it sits on my tongue like a sugar cube as he fucks me. Curiosity takes over. Please, daddy, I say carefully, the word unfamiliar and not funny anymore. His face is tucked into my shoulder but I can feel the impact of it in how his whole body shudders, the control going haywire in his square frame. I’ve always known — from reading, which is not the same thing as feeling — that the submissive is who truly runs the scene, who holds the key to ending everything with their safe word, but this is different. I’m your good girl, daddy, I say. It’s not wrong, it’s delicious. He gives me permission to come and tells me how proud of me he is. In my life, I have never felt this exact mixture of fragile and precious. I don’t know that I have felt this much in years.
The pages of Madison’s book are still dog-eared from 2014. L Train commuters raise their eyebrows at its cover but it helps me understand why I am both strong and thrilled to do exactly as he says. For me, submission is less about subservience than it is about communication and trust: years of being emotionally cat-fished by boys who promised to not let me down have made a man who tells me just how good I am deeply arousing. I can’t handle being scolded or punished, told to stop laughing, deprived of touch — being dominated is still bloody at the edges. But to be owned, to be taken care of, to know that I am safe and understood… he forces me to look him in the eyes and I need to let myself be seen. I tell him about the judgmental commuters and he says a good girl doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. I’m not used to being ashamed of what I desire and so I decide not to let myself be. This is new and I’m going to enjoy it. It doesn’t feel like gambling to have faith in him.
For a week I am Media Twitter’s gossip: a blog post I wrote is linked to and annotated and pressed into millennial-bashing headlines. It is simultaneously thrilling and horrible to be heard — everyone wants a comment and everyone has advice. He texts me while I’m at work to see if I’m okay. During the day he’s an affable, funny writer always ready with a bizarre pun, and I’m an activist-slash-professional wearing pencil skirts and no makeup. I’m not okay but I’ve seen worse online: this time my critics are patronizing but not violent, not personal.
He comes over that Friday and after a week of being tough it is a relief to let him pull lace off my skin. There are men in my life who are kind and do unkind things but he is kind with every touch, even as my back is scratched raw, even as my ass burns under his palm. I am an exposed wire with its rubber casting peeled away. Yes, daddy. Thank you, daddy. The word is less unfamiliar now and I am learning when and how to use it. I sleep without nightmares about my Twitter mentions or phone calls from unlisted numbers. In the morning I count the bruises scattered across my shoulders and hips like pennies on the sidewalk. I sit down to write.
